When choosing a holiday destination, I listen to friends, examine data from the Met Office and think hard about where the nearest paparazzi photographer might be. What I don’t do is thumb through my record collection, pick out my favourite, and rent the lead singer’s villa. You probably know where I’m going with this: the extraordinary holiday locations chosen by Mr and Mrs Blair.

Recently it has been Sir Cliff’s sumptuous villa in glittering Barbados and now, thanks to a wonky landing at Miami airport, we know he’s staying at a waterfront mansion owned by Field Marshal Robin Gibb of the Bee Gees.

Of course, I doubt either of these choices came from His Toniness. Having been to a public school in the 1970s, I should imagine his preferred choice of holiday location might be the Dutch canalside house of Thijs van Leer of Focus, or maybe the organic bean farm now run by Supertramp’s Roger Hodgson.

Unfortunately, most of the rock stars to whom Tony undoubtedly listened in the 1970s are now tweedy landowners in Wiltshire who like to shoot anything that moves and drive very fast from grouse to grouse in Range Rovers. I can see them in their delightful Tuscan villas discussing the Boden catalogue with Dave and Sam, but I can’t imagine that they have much in common with Tony and Cherie.

So, we can deduce that they’re actually working their way through Cherie’s record collection. Next year, I imagine, it’ll be Lord Manilow’s penthouse in Vegas and then, perhaps, General James Last’s schloss in the Bavarian Alps.

I’m actually rather surprised by this. I’ve always had Tony clocked as Snowball, and Cherie as Napoleon, a steady hard-a-port hand on the tiller. So I’ve rather imagined that her musical tastes started at Billy Bragg, moved through Kirsty McColl and then sort of ended up with the Pogues.

Plainly, though, I’m wrong. She obviously goes down the middle of the road so firmly that I’m surprised she doesn’t have a bruised arse from running over all the Catseyes.

Anyway, a bit later than planned, I shall now get to the point of this new year missive: that you can learn an awful lot about someone from their choice of holiday destination.

In the past couple of years I’ve been to Corsica, Iceland and Botswana. Next year it’ll be Canada. So you know from this list that we’re not an entirely conventional family and that, as a result, we’d make good dinner party guests.

Likewise, if you meet someone who’s been to Ibiza you will know straight away that they are drug addicts and nymphomaniacs, and that if they’ve just come back from the Greek islands they are either homosexual or their husband has recently run off with his pneumatically breasted secretary.

Anyone who goes to France votes Conservative. Anyone who goes to Italy votes Labour, and anyone who goes to Spain has, at some point in the recent past, held up a post office. The only person who ever went to Germany for a vacation was Arthur Scargill.

Those who go on long-haul holidays can be split into two neat groups. If they go west they are likely to be shallow, materialistic and fitted with hair that isn’t entirely normal. Those who go east will be interesting, dynamic and have unruly pubes.

Dubai is right out. It’s all very well having an indoor ski slope in the desert and guaranteed sunshine and lots of things to do in the empty quarter, but you cannot drink outside your hotel. And I’m sorry, but anyone who puts quad biking and wadi bashing above the need for a glass of something chilled is plainly out of their tiny minds.

So what about taking a holiday at home? Tricky this, because obviously Rock is tremendous if you’re 19 and you’re being propelled through life by a cocktail of testosterone and cannabis. And Norfolk is also wonderful if you have developed a television programme and you want to meet commissioning editors in the local oyster bar.

But the worry I have about people who go on holiday in Britain is that they might be caravanists or, worse, environmentalists. They might think, in other words, that by not going on an aeroplane they have in some way saved the life of a Tasmanian butterfly.

Happily, however, Napoleon and Snowball have rather blown this argument into the middle of next week by going to stay chez Lord Sir Field Marshal Gibb.

We know from the plane crash that they did not go to Florida on an organic sailing boat, and we know from the press coverage that they are being transported to and from the Big Pink restaurant in a big black Cadillac SUV.

His Toniness has told us again and again that man’s effect on the environment, and in particular on climate change, is large and growing. He’s asked us to reduce our carbon footprints. And so, while we’re all at home eating our low-energy light bulbs, it’s a bit annoying to find that to satisfy his wife’s lust for the Bee Gees he’s straddling the Atlantic with a big carbon stomp.

In the olden days Labour leaders were more careful. Harold Wilson holidayed in the Isles of Scilly, Michael Foot liked Venice and John Smith would go walking in Scotland. Not because he wanted to meet Sheena Easton but because he liked the mountains.

Of course, back then, all the animals were equal. But now, thanks to Napoleon and Snowball, some really are more equal than others.

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